SORRY, YOUR BILLBOARD IS OBSCENE. HOW ABOUT A SHIRTLESS UNDERWEAR MODEL SAYING "DEMOCRACY MAKES ME HOT"?

A group of antiwar advocates is accusing Clear Channel Communications, one of the nation's largest media companies, with close ties to national Republicans, of preventing the group from displaying a Times Square billboard critical of the war in Iraq.

The billboard - an image of a red, white and blue bomb with the words "Democracy Is Best Taught by Example, Not by War" - was supposed to go up next month, the antiwar group said...

Last night, the president and chief executive of Clear Channel, Paul Meyer, said the company had objected to the group's use of "the bomb imagery" in the proposed billboard. Mr. Meyer said Clear Channel had accepted a billboard that would replace the bomb with a dove....

[Project Billboard spokesman Howard] Wolfson said that earlier, Clear Channel had rejected the ad with the dove as well as the one with the bomb, demanding that the words be changed, too....

--New York Times

Go to the Times link. The bomb doesn't even look like a real bomb you'd use in a war -- it looks like a cartoon bomb, for Pete's sake. It's like something out Rocky & Bullwinkle. And besides, if you wanted to spare New Yorkers' feelings in a post-9/11 world, shouldn't you ban images of airplanes?

I love this:

A lawyer for Project Billboard, Doug Curtis, said that at one point Clear Channel suggested that the group use a less provocative billboard ad, one with the image of a little girl waving a flag accompanied by the words, "Democracy is best taught by example."

Yeah, that's almost exactly the same message, isn't it?